A lot of people know this yet most of us still fall victim to the consequences of its violation.
I know and I have experienced the extremes and behaviors that resulted in my effort to make sure I never lost anyone in my life.
The idea of “once friends and now strangers” was something that I would never accept to happen in my own relationships until it almost cost me my life.
But as much as I think those days are behind me, I still see the influence that this still has on other people’s lives.
So many people from all walks of life fall victim to this behavior of losing themselves while trying hard not to lose those people in their lives.
But is it even possible for someone to really avoid losing themselves? This and many other questions are what we are going to explore in this article and the solutions to the same end.
. . .
My Story
For the longest time before 2016, I had been living in violation of this. I always made sure that I kept all my friendships whether they served me or not.
Whenever I would notice my relationships drifting apart, the memories that those relationships held would kick me into action to try and close the growing distance.
This was in form of thoughtful letters to such friends or messages expressing my appreciation for the friendship I had with those people. There were many other creative expressions that I would do to put some life back into my dying relationships.
2016 came around and this time it was with a person I had known for just under one year up to this point.
He and I had become friends over our love for music and meditation. Although our music tastes were extremely different, that didn’t stop us from bonding into the best friends ever over the music.
After about 11 months of this friendship, I think he was fed up and it was also coincidentally that time of the year when people make their new resolutions.
Unbeknownst to me, his major new year’s resolution for 2016 was to dissolve the friendship. Since I had never experienced this before, I thought it was just going to be like other friendships I had been in before.
“Close the gap,” I thought to myself. “It should be very easy since the two of you are virtually inseparable.”
Yes. This person and I were inseparable. I like to think about our relationships like that of Shams Tabrizi and Rumi.
But unlike other friendships of mine, I did not notice that our friendship was drifting apart. I did not know he was hurting.
This ignorance on my side, therefore, caused me to hurt him even more whenever I sent him WhatsApp messages apologizing for something I had no idea about and promising that I would change my behavior to match what he needed.
This persistent madness that I had picked up as a desperate effort to get my friend back caused two major problems.
- It drove us further apart with each message I sent. What appeared to me as a friend’s gesture was interpreted by him as a sign of a psychopath and manipulative devil. Yes, those were his words.
- It made me lose any sense of what my priorities were. This opened me up to a lot of depression and suicidal tendencies. (I am fine now this is why I feel comfortable sharing this.)
These two points are the reasons why you too should not be afraid of losing people in your life but rather be afraid of losing yourself trying to fit into other people’s expectations.
Let us discuss the two points in a little more detail as it concerns you now.
To me, being afraid of losing other people in your life and not being afraid of losing yourself is called a violation. That is what I will refer to whenever I use the word violation in this article.
. . .
It drove us further apart with each message I sent.
In a lot of cases when people are not ready to end friendships or relationships, they will do a lot of things hoping that these will make the other person like or love them again.
The problem here is that more often than not, it actually drives you even further apart if the other person wants to end it and you start being clingy like I was.
The only time this works is if the other person still likes you as well in which case may make him or her reconsider and “take you back” as a second chance.
It’s only because it serves them. If they still love you, it means that they have the emotional satisfaction of being with you.
If they don’t want anything to do with you, however, and you keep trying to get them back, they will twist your efforts into sick narratives such as being a psychopath or manipulative devil.
I am sure some psychopaths do this but then again once you are in the same situation, it is hard to tell whether your efforts are genuine or not.
What makes you want to save your friendship or relationship may be genuine or not but if the other person does not like you anymore, they’ll perceive your efforts as irritating and dishonest and the opposite is true as well.
How you should handle the situation instead
If your friendship or relationship has reached this stage and you feel the need to save it but then your efforts are used for mud carpets by the other person, pushing on will only make it worse. But something else can help get you what you want.
Time and understanding…
This is very simple but you will be amazed at how impatient people can be. Worse still how people can desperately try to get back what they had.
Concerning time, you should give the other person time to process how meaningful your relationship is with them.
This gives both of you time apart from each other and many studies show this as a very important practice in relationships.
I noticed this in my case with my friend. When I would give him time, he would start coming back but then I would get excited and this caused irreparable damage to our friendship.
This leads me into the next bit… Understanding…
Once you have given the other person time, you must also accept the fact that the identity of your relationship may be fundamentally changed by this event and in that way, make peace with the fact that things may never be “like they used to be.”
Having this understanding will help you take your time to rebuild and come up with a new identity for your friendship and probably a better one.
I for example had a friend whom I was attracted to and each time she talked about other boys she liked it hurt me but once I told her how I felt about her, the identity of the friendship I had with her died and we now have a friendship built on genuine trust and brutal honesty.
I did not try to get back to the memories of trying to be “the nice guy”. I made my intentions clear and dealt with the changes that had to take place in our relationship.
So allow for time to pass as you take a break from one another and have the understanding that what you had may be dead and gone and now the identity of your friendship may be very different.
During your time apart, however, don’t feel the need to bring the other person down. Just genuinely take a break and focus on other things.
. . .
It made me lose any sense of what my priorities were
When you are so afraid of losing someone at the expense of losing yourself, you start giving priorities to things you think they like rather than what you like.
I remember in my case, I stopped caring about my music tastes and gave priorities to his. It was painful having to listen to Micheal Jackson’s music even though it’s not something I had ever considered but I thought this could impress him and all that nonsense but it, in turn, annoyed him more.
This also made me sink deeper into the unknown territories of weird music and interests I had never considered hoping to meet my friend there the only problem being that he was not there.
A few months into 2016, I found myself confused and lost. It didn’t help that he called my music and interests “ancient” and me a loser for being so old with nothing accomplished for myself.
I was 21, he was 17 and although we were both in 2nd year of university, it made me want to make a change for the better so abandoning all that I cared about in a desperate need of validation from him was a painful journey that I could not walk away from because I was trying to get my friend back.
This was the case for several months until I found myself entirely different in both identity and physical appearance.
I thought less of myself, my body had lost more than 40kgs/88lbs and for a 6’2″ I was left so lanky after losing half my weight.
My constant thoughts were quitting school and suicide because I didn’t believe I had anything better to contribute to the world.
Trashing my priorities and considering the other person’s at the expense of my own got me lost not because it’s what the other person wanted but because it’s what I thought he wanted.
That of course was not true.
People always find company among those who can help them advance their own lives.
Unless you are trying to get attention from someone who takes pride in helping people, you should work on yourself and your priorities instead of furthering what you think the other person’s priorities are.
I can guarantee that you won’t get the other person’s priorities right if you try to and you might even drive them further apart as I did.
Do not lose yourself trying to further what you think the other person’s agendas are. Be more afraid of that.
When in a relationship, it best serves you to make sure that you are remaining true to your own ideas and a lot of people like such a person.
When you try to change who you are for the other person, as much as that may be “sweet” of you to do, it sooner or later makes the other person resent you for not having goals of your own.
Sometimes I like theorizing that this is nature/life’s way of making sure that you remain on your journey instead of walking the journey of other people.
If you love another person, make yourself better in line with who you are so that you can contribute better to your relationship and they will love you for it.
. . .
Your friends will like you more when you have and are working on your own ambitions instead of trying to stay close to them by changing who you are to match who they are.
Take the time to better yourself in line with what your interests are and you will have the best life and contribution to give to those you meet.
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This post was previously published on Modern Identities.
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